Trouble In The Trees: Medal Of Honor Multiplayer

Black Ops 2 may have a villain with all of the weapons and most of the beards, but that doesn’t mean we can just forget about the game’s real-life nemesis – who also has all of the weapons and most of the beards. I speak, of course, about Medal of Honor: Warfighter, which would also like to show you its fanciest new war-waging wares. This time, though, story’s taking a backseat in favor of multiplayer, and somewhere, a koala version of Smokey Bear weeps as these nationalism-powered soldier types welcome each other to the jungle by blowing it up. Witness the environmentally-unfriendly carnage after the break.

In between all the THOOMS, RATTATTATTATATAAs, and POWBIFFs, I did manage to catch a couple interesting things. For one, drones appear to officially be part of multiplayer – though I don’t honestly know if players can control them or not. Also, a few things look nicely destructible thanks to a bit of help from the Hulk-like hand of Frostbite 2. Admittedly, it was mostly the usual suspects – wood splintering, vehicles hitting the skids, etc – but a bridge got reduced to rubble, so that was neat. Trees, meanwhile, barely budged – which is either disappointing or an encouraging sign of nature’s resilience in the face of humanity’s callous deeds.

Apparently, all of this is supposed to play into a, er, FIFA-inspired national-pride-based metagame. So the point is to root for the home team and try to further its cause in the – and here’s a phrase that never would’ve flown even 15 years ago – feel-good war of the century. I’m not really sure how I feel about that, but I also haven’t gotten to play it, so no verdict for now. Anyway, THOOM, BLAM, KER-WHAMZOTT. Discuss.